Experts Conclude Oil Drilling Has Hurt Alaska's North Slope

By ANDREW C. REVKIN

Published: March 5, 2003

Even though oil companies have greatly improved practices in the Arctic, three decades of drilling along Alaska's North Slope have produced a steady accumulation of harmful environmental and social effects that will probably grow as exploration expands, a panel of experts has concluded.

Some of the problems could last for centuries, the experts said in a report yesterday, both because environmental damage does not heal easily in the area's harsh climate and because it is uneconomical to remove structures or restore damaged areas once drilling is over.

The report, produced by the National Research Council, was immediately hailed by opponents of drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which lies east of established oil fields and is the only part of America's only stretch of Arctic coastline that for now is off limits to drilling. Advocates of drilling called it biased. Administration officials said improved techniques would lessen the environmental impact of future drilling.

The council, the research arm of the National Academies, an independent advisory body on science, produced the report at the request of Republican lawmakers supporting oil drilling in the Arctic refuge. (The report can be found on the Web at nas.edu.)

President Bush and many Republicans in Congress and Alaska lawmakers from both parties are pushing this year for legislation that would open the coastal plain of the refuge to development.

The panel made no judgment on whether the environmental costs of Arctic oil development outweighed the economic benefits of wells that have, on average, supplied about 20 percent of America's domestic production since 1977 and provided cash to poor native communities.

The North Slope is a windswept, Minnesota-size region -- bereft of trees but brimming with wildlife -- that runs from the peaks of the Brooks Range north to the Arctic Ocean. In 1968, huge oil reserves were discovered in Prudhoe Bay, about dead center on the coastline, and a web of pipelines, roads, power lines, and faint trails left by ground-thumping seismic survey teams has spread outward ever since.

The report said some of the environmental problems result from lack of money to restore damaged ecosystems, from ill-defined layers of local and federal regulations and from the fact that the area is home to rare wildlife.

The committee judged it unlikely that most disturbed habitat on the North Slope would ever be restored. ''Natural recovery in the Arctic is very slow, because of the cold; so the effects of abandoned structures and unrestored landscapes could persist for centuries and accumulate,'' the report said.

A particular problem was the lack of specific state or federal rules requiring cleanups of degraded areas, said the chairman of the expert panel, Dr. Gordon H. Orians, a professor emeritus of zoology at the University of Washington in Seattle.

''There's no vision and planning for where things ought to go,'' Dr. Orians said yesterday in a telephone news conference. ''Unless this is improved substantially,'' he said, ''undesirable effects in the future are likely to be greater.''

The report's authors and officials from the research council defended the analysis, noting that the panel included several experts who worked for oil companies along with scientists from academia, one environmental group (the Natural Resources Defense Council), and Alaskan organizations. The panel endorsed the report unanimously, Dr. Orians said.

Critics of drilling, particularly in the refuge, welcomed the report. ''It projects a chilling picture of a diminished landscape if the Bush administration's plans are realized,'' said Jamie Rappaport Clark, senior vice president for conservation programs at the National Wildlife Federation, a private conservation group.

Industry officials and some lawmakers supporting drilling focused on the report's sections describing the economic benefits of oil extraction cited by native communities and the environmental benefits of advanced oil-exploration techniques.

The panel noted that the oil industry has made great strides in cutting its ''footprint'' on the fragile Arctic landscape and preventing oil spills.

But it concluded that the impacts were far-reaching nonetheless: from specific harms like a drop in reproduction in some nesting birds and a rise in diabetes in native communities to an erosion of the spiritual and aesthetic values of the barren yet majestic region.

It also said the sharp warming of the climate in the Arctic in recent decades could disrupt some techniques with which companies have avoided some harm to the landscape, including the building of temporary ice roads in winter instead of permanent gravel tracks.

The lack of specific federal or state rules dealing with abandoned facilities on the tundra has resulted in restoration of fewer than 1 percent of the dormant drilling pads, roads, or other abandoned, gravel-covered areas in the region, the experts said.

''Roads, pads, pipelines, seismic-vehicle tracks, and transmission lines; air, ground, and vessel traffic; drilling activities; landfills, housing, processing facilities, and other industrial infrastructure have reduced opportunities for solitude and have compromised wild-land and scenic values over large areas,'' it said. ''The structures and activities also violate the spirit of the land, a value that is reported by some Alaska Natives to be central to their culture.''

Chart: ''Decades of Drilling Leave a Legacy'' According to a new report, drilling along Alaska's North Slope has marked the landscape. Below, the construction in the region since the late 1960's. Cumulative buildup of oilfield infrastructure on Alaska's North Slope, 1968-2001, in acres Graph tracks gravelcovered area (drill pads), mined areas and other, includes areas around gravel pads, airstrips, etc. (Sources: National Research Council [charts]; Pamela A. Miller, Arctic Connections [map]) Map of Alaska highlighting areas of oil exploration and development including: Existing pipelines and roads Proposed pipelines and roads Proposed well Existing well Well in existence since 1968